Can a manufacturer stop or restrict parallel imports?
The manufacturer or the owner of an industrial or commercial right may indeed ask the national authorities or courts of the Member State of destination to protect the specific subject-matter of these rights. In other words, a patent holder may seek protection of his exclusive right to use an invention with a view to manufacturing industrial products and putting them into circulation for the first time, either directly or by the grant of licences to third parties. But as soon as he markets his product for the first time in any one Member State, he loses his right to restrict the marketing of the product in other Member States (i.e. his exclusive marketing right is exhausted throughout the Internal Market, under the principle of ‘Community exhaustion’). The parallel importer may then buy the product in one Member State and market it in another.
